May 5, 2009

Slate cuts to the heart of the question: "Is Sailer a nice guy?"

In "The Case for Colorblindness in the Age of Genetics," William Saletan responds to a John McWhorter post in The New Republic entitled "Lions and Sailers and Bears, Oh My!--Why Saletan Thinks We Should Keep the Black-White Performance Gap Under Wraps."Saletan writes:
McWhorter casually dismisses the less-intelligence theory and its blogger-advocate Steve Sailer, with whom I tangled yesterday. Why? Because McWhorter is confident that his alternative theory, based on language, can explain racial gaps in test scores. In his commentary on the New Haven case, McWhorter lays out the theory: Working-class blacks and whites communicate orally rather than in writing, and they're unfamiliar with the art of answering direct questions. I'm sure there's truth in this theory. But McWhorter offers no quantitative evidence for it. Nor does it address some of the most difficult evidence presented by proponents of the genetic theory: whites outscoring blacks even when the class factor skews the other way. In his rebuttal to my original article on the NAEP data, for instance, Sailer notes:

Here's the 2007 8th grade Reading scores broken down by race and income. White kids whose parents are so poor that they are eligible for the National School Lunch Program outscore affluent black kids by four points and affluent Hispanic kids by one point. The gap between poor whites and poor blacks is 19 points, and the gap among not poor whites and not poor blacks is 21 points. That's what you normally get—sizable racial gaps anyway you slice it.

Is Sailer a nice guy? No. Does he display an unhealthy interest in categorizing people by race or ethnicity? Yes. But the problem here isn't Sailer, James Watson, Charles Murray, or anybody else you feel like dismissing as a racist. [Whew! I dodged a bullet there. For a moment I thought he was going to lump me in with not only Charles Murray and James D. Watson, but also with Francis Crick, Arthur Jensen, William D. Hamilton, Ronald A. Fisher, Francis Galton, and Charles Darwin. Please don't throw me in that briar patch!] The problem is the evidence these people quote. Condemnation won't make it go away.

Don't get me wrong. Genetic and environmental explanations aren't mutually exclusive. In the case of IQ, everybody accepts environmental factors, and there's plenty of evidence and argument against the hereditarian view. But that's just one battle in a larger war. Beyond the march of test scores, there's the onslaught of genetic research. We've already identified genes that correlate with traits and vary in prevalence between ethnic groups. Are you confident that intelligence will turn out to be exempt from this list? Confident enough to leave no backup plan, no understanding of equality that can withstand a partial role for heredity? Confident enough to keep tallying and reporting test scores by race? And if intelligence turns out not to vary genetically between groups, do you imagine that we'll get just as lucky with every other significant mental trait?

If you want to know why I keep writing about this subject, Mr. McWhorter, there's your answer. No, I don't care about the merit badge. I'm staring over your shoulder at an oncoming train. It starts with genomic differentiation of populations around the world, and that's just the locomotive. If you turn around and look, you'll see that the first few cars are already in view: genes that affect mental traits, genes that affect abilities, and variations between populations in the prevalence of these genes. No genetically distinguishable population will be spared. We're sitting in the path of this train, tied to the tracks by a literalist conception of equality that can't accept hereditary differences between group averages. I suggest we free ourselves.

Under these circumstances, do I think gaps between average white and black test scores should "shed less than positive light on black people"? No, I don't. Each of us should be judged by his own performance, not by a stereotype. Genetic variation between averages doesn't alter that moral truth. Nor does it give anyone an excuse.


Okay, but that's not how Barack Obama thinks, nor is it how the federal government think. For decades, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has enforced the Four-Fifths Rule:

"A selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group which is less than four-fifths (4/5) (or eighty percent) of the rate for the group with the highest rate will generally be regarded by the Federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact, while a greater than four-fifths rate will generally not be regarded by Federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact."

In other words, if 50 percent of whites pass the test, 40 percent or more of each minority group must pass the test, or the burden of proof is on the employer to vindicate the selection process. This can be so expensive and uncertain that many employers just impose hiring and promotion quotas upon themselves.

The four-fifths rule is as the heart of the Ricci fireman's case.

Really, Mr. Saletan should take up his argument with Mr. Obama.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

119 comments:

SFG said...

"Sailer, James Watson, Charles Murray..."

Well, you're in the same breath with the co-discoverer of DNA. Even in context (three 'racists'), that can't be all bad ;)

Anonymous said...

What the hell? You have an interest in this because it's what you do. Specialization exists! What a shocker!

Anonymous said...

I'm staring over your shoulder at an oncoming train. It starts with genomic differentiation of populations around the world, and that's just the locomotive.An oncoming train? Yes, that's it! It starts with noticing differences between populations. Where does this metaphorical train end up?

That's right...Auschwitz. Careful now, Mr. Saletan. Don't plotz. Just make sure to keep those open tickets to Ben Gurion close at hand.

fawnmister said...

"Each of us should be judged by his own performance, not by a stereotype."

But if the biological qualities of a race are essentially to the culture and institutions that it produces, and if racial tribalism is part of human nature, then how is a multiracial AND free society possible in the long run? Blacks would have to believe that they DESERVE poverty at a much higher rate than whites, and that they DESERVE the historical desire of whites (as well as Arabs, Asians, etc.), to live apart from them. Even if an African is very successful as an individual, isn't he always going to tend to identify with his downtrodden brethren, just like Obama? Are blacks and other under-performing groups ever going to accept an inferior self image?

Anonymous said...

He threw you under the bus, Steve.

AMac said...

Racists, racists, racists--they're everywhere.

Worse than Commies, back in the 1950s.

Meanwhile, Saletan in his way and McWhorter in his have incidentally drafted amicus briefs for Ricci.

Could the data that Sailer et al. analyze--correctly, as far as we can tell, hootin' and hollerin' aside--have anything to do with public policy issues? Like the principals behind the laws and legislation behind employment and promotion mandates?

Like Saletan, I just can't figure out any connections. It's a real head-scratcher.

Can't spend too much time worrying about it, though. Got to check under the bed again for racists, Commies, child pornographers. Whatever.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that this gentleman finds you an unpleasant guy ("not nice") because of your acknowledgment and discussion of factual information as well as the application of Occam's Razor. Your demeanor is, of course, irrelevant to the data and the validity of your theory. But it makes him feel and look better to portray himself a moderate to revolutionary Sailerist factual radicalism.

What is it with secular humanism and its proponents' religious belief in egalitarianism? I thought the big selling point of secular humanism over theocracy was its scientific search for the truth?

Anonymous said...

I think Saletan wants someone really smart to give him a good argument that he can understand against your views, Steve.

Anonymous said...

"Is Sailer a nice guy? No."

Wait, what?
Does he know you?
I don't, but I've never seen you write anything mean spirited. I've never seen anything that would make me think you weren't a nice guy.
Your obsession with golf course architecture may make one conclude that you're not a baseball bat wielding knuckledragger when not compiling biometric data.

Half Sigma said...

I think you're a nice guy.

Veracitor said...

Boy, Saletan is thick. You keep pointing out that the tropism he calls "[Sailer's] unhealthy interest in categorizing people by race or ethnicity" is written into public law by the sort of people who surround Saletan every day. I really feel for you, Steve, reading over and over how you're evil for looking at the exact same things as your detractors, but having the temerity to point out the Emperor's deficit of raiment.

Acilius said...

Saletan is starting to sound like one of those rom-com characters who hate hate HATE a certain someone- until one fateful night...

McWhorter's idea seems like something that would command the respect of iSteve fans. It seems to me that much of what fuels the discussion of the IQ debate around here is a mixture of frustration and amusement with the refusal or inability of environmentalists to offer a direct answer to the evidence hereditarians present in defense of their position. So it would seem that an argument which not only does address that evidence directly, but which also takes as its chief premise the fact that not everyone is in the habit of offering direct answers, would excite this crowd.

Anonymous said...

"Are you confident that intelligence will turn out to be exempt from this list? Confident enough to leave no backup plan, no understanding of equality that can withstand a partial role for heredity? Confident enough to keep tallying and reporting test scores by race?"

He implies here that he thinks that if human biodiversity is real, then that reality should be hidden. Think about the depth of the Machiavellianism on display here. Quit tallying those scores! What if it turns out that they mean something we don't like? Not exactly a searcher for truth, is he?

"Does he display an unhealthy interest in categorizing people by race or ethnicity?"

See, for Saletan and his ilk that interest is always healthy. For others it's unhealthy. And he talks about equality in the same breath! And while typing up such thoughts he actually CONDEMNS tribalism! Oh my.

My assessment of Saletan's motives:

Alerting the thought police of the existence of Steve, the wider HBD community and their ideas. He thinks that these are dangerous folks and dangerous thoughts that must be combated. His ideas about combating them include censorship (stop tallying!) and some kind of a rethinking of PC dogma. The question of whether or not the original dogma or the future, improved version of this dogma accords with reality is apparently deemed irrelevant by Saletan. This is about what he thinks the masses should think, not about what's actually true.

SFG said...

Er, the guy who co-discovered the structure of DNA and thus set off the genetic revolution. Ooops!

Anonymous said...

Looks to me as if Saletan is playing a good cop/bad cop game, with you as the bad cop and himself as the good.

Joel said...

I think you seem like a nice guy.

testing99 said...

I think it's entirely possible that a new Inquisition will "establish" that the Sun revolves around the Earth, so to speak in order to maintain the current regime of PC and Affirmative Action.

If you undermine the theory behind Affirmative Action (that disparate racial results can only be from "racism" and not inherent genetic differences) you create a lot of sudden losers out of winners.

Not the least of which is White Women. Who form the swing vote and will not give up their Affirmative Action goodies, no matter what it costs.

Women indeed have a low risk preference vs. men, so they are the natural constituency for low-risk (or seeming low risk) Affirmative Action schemes that benefit them. And as noted, few women are married these days, so husbands or sons don't come into consideration.

Understanding of genetic differences will come as "forbidden knowledge" propagated mostly through Asian research, Japan and China.

Cody said...

Interesting how he judged you as a bad person without actually, you know, knowing you.

Anonymous said...

"We're sitting in the path of this train, tied to the tracks by a literalist conception of equality that can't accept hereditary differences between group averages."

Once again I have to ask, what does that even mean? Perhaps Saletan does have some different conception of equality, but if so I'd like to see it.

Anonymous said...

The question Saletan repeatedly leaves begging is that if race is an "improper frame," then we need to stop spending billions of dollars trying to equalize racial outcomes and leave it up to individuals to compete on their own merits. Which means, as the not-a-nice-guy Steve Sailer says, that we are going to have to get comfortable with inequality of outcomes, just like in the Olympics and at MIT.

I think you may be right that Saletan sees the corner he's painted himself into. And since he reads this blog, maybe he'd care to address these points.

--Senor Doug

Sideways said...

It really does read like Steve if he were trying to keep a job writing for something like, for example, Slate. Steve isn't nice, apparently, because he's willing to speak his mind when it offends people who desperately want to believe in left-wing creationism.

sg said...

google rendered a page with comparisons based on race of homeschooled students that shows no significant racial achievement gap. Sample size 5400. I had seen that referenced before but hadn't looked it up. Perhaps minority and white homeschooled students come from parents of similar IQ.

Anonymous said...

What McWhorter doesn't seem to realize is that while he has free license to say whatever he wants about black underachievement, white journalists like Saletan who write about the achievement gap had better damn sure quick come up with a way to blame it on whitey, for fear of the career-destroying "racist" label.

A trend I've noticed among black "conservative" "intellectuals" is that they tend to be willing to consider every possible explanation for the achievement gap - EXCEPT heritable factors. Some of them even come out and say that it shouldn't be studied, and that even if it were true they wouldn't want to know. But most simply believe that it is not possible. Every other trait demonstrably varies between races, but intelligence, the mind, is uniform.

It's easy to understand why. Upper-class blacks think that as long as they raise their kids the "right" way, their kids will be just like whites. Better, in fact - you never see these "intellectuals" challenging the notion of hereditary black physical superiority. It's understandable that these individuals shudder at the idea that despite embracing "white" culture, their children might still end up like those lower-class blacks.

I'm very skeptical of correlations taken to imply causation, so I still don't accept the notion that NAMs are genetically inferior. There is evidence, but I don't think it's conclusive. However, I am absolutely opposed to the politicization of science. When journalists and scientists are afraid of finding out the truth, because it might be painful, everyone suffers.

king obama said...

I guess this cuts to a question I have been meaning to as Steve for a while: Are you a racist, Steve?

It would be interesting to get an idea of how you feel.

For instance, are you against interracial relationships? Do you have any black friends?

You never seem to reveal your true feelings about that subject, despite being called a racist all the time.

DK said...

Both Saletan and McWhorter were effective in demonstrating that the other one failed to effectively refute Sailer.

More disturbingly...Steve, are you really a latte drinker?

Anonymous said...

They've got it exactly wrong. I'm a liberal/leftist who thinks you're wrong about race and intelligence but hang around because you come across as a really nice guy who writes entertainingly on a wide variety of topics.

pwyll said...

Actually, Steve comes across to me as one of the most genial, mellow bloggers I read. The very picture of a "nice guy."

ddd said...

I dispute that anti-racists are all that "nice". I'm not some kind of liberatrian "let them eat cake" type, but neither do I think that segment X of society should necessarily be charged with the uplift of segment Y (which makes me a monster in the eyes of leftists if I assign certain values to X and Y). I also have strong doubts about the motivations of many of those who believe such things, as I believe that they are often motivated by things *besides* compassion. Compassion does not require much (if anything) in the way of lies or fantasies such as hbd-denial. Our values (in the west) have been thoroughly warped by a toxic combination of Christianity and Marxism. Christians are prone to hbd-denial because hbd explains good and evil in a way that conflicts with their free-will God/Satan paradigm, and Marxists hate hbd because it conflicts with their human interchangeability belief. Recently the two supposedly irreconcilable factions (Marxists and Christians) have merged into a Frankenstein, now that Christian churches have taken up "social justice" and are directly supportive of current immigration policies. The comparative failure of Christian doctrines to explain anything has been compensated for by attaching those doctrines to Marxist dogma, and this is how Christianity adapted to the modern age. The church could not adapt any other way. This is why i balk (and even get angry) at suggestions that a reinvigorated Christianity would be salubrious for the west. I am trying to be "nice" as I write this. I have nothing against Jesus and so on. I think he was a good guy who stood for good things, but the Christian church has been a decidedly mixed blessing.

Anonymous said...

I can't help but post a link to this article:

The Six Flavors of White Supremacy

http://www.slate.com/id/2217713?nav=wp

"thanks to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project and Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League"

Notice they didn't include "scientific racists" like Steve. Maybe they just lump him in with the Neo-Nazis.

I'm just glad to know that the mainstream media is still keeping an eye on the KKK. Those guys are dangerous!

SFG said...

Actually, Steve does strike me as nice...in many cases too nice to follow his thoughts all their way to their logical end. ;)

eh said...

Saletan is just another media poseur, pretending to be rational/to value rationality while using his writing as a sort of seance to channel censure toward Sailer. Pathetic.

notuswind said...

Saletan writes:

"Each of us should be judged by his own performance, not by a stereotype. Genetic variation between averages doesn't alter that moral truth. Nor does it give anyone an excuse."

The problem with this line of thought is that public policy is usually made to address the needs of groups and not individuals. To wit, if the American intelligenstia were willing to admit that the various racial gaps were a natural byproduct of heredity (as opposed to an underlying societal racism) then we would no longer fund programs that try to achieve the impossible (racial parity) nor feel the need to hold the white populace accountable for these gaps. Of course, we would also have to reinterpret an entire generation of public policy on the matter as being quixotic.

My opinion is that the elite Left is completely unable to absorb even modest amounts of race-realism (no matter how obvious) since its belief in complete racial equality has been such a core organizing principle for the past six decades. The irony is that all this is coming from an ideology that prides itself on being pro-science!

Anonymous said...

I love you.
Even though you're an anti-semite.

dorkus malorkus said...

I think Saletan is trying to deal with the fact that the masses are no longer taught how to think, and by masses I mean liberal journalist and politically active types. Most of them do not even know what an ad hominem argument is. If a bad person says or advocates something, it can't be tolerated.

So he says, "Sailer's a jerk, but the data can't be wished away."

He's caught between the intractability of the issue and the asininity of his audience.

Melykin said...

I think Saletan is correct about the oncoming train. This is dangerous stuff. You just can't go around telling whole races of people that they are less intelligent. It would not go well.

Two cases where one ethnic group within a population was perhaps smarter than other groups are the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the East Indians in Uganda, under Idi Amin. Neither of these situations turned out well. People just don't take kindly to this sort of thing.

I think the US should keep spending money on NCLB-type programs, and do the best you can to help the African Americans succeed. Any other course of action is not going to turn out well. Spending money in this way is a good investment in a stable society. Maybe the race gap will never be closed. That doesn't mean it isn't a good idea to keep trying. After all, if it really is true that AA have an average IQ 15 points below whites, then surely the best course of action is to give them extra help in school as you would for children of any race with the same problem. Isn't that what the NCLB program does?

Mr. Anon said...

"Slate cuts to the heart of the question: "Is Sailer a nice guy?""

Wherein William Saletan says that Steve Sailer is a bad man for believing today what Saletan will believe next week.

"Does he display an unhealthy interest in categorizing people by race or ethnicity? Yes."

In think that Saletan, Slate, indeed the whole liberal media establishment, demonstrate an unhealthy disinterest and inability to categorize people by race or ethnicity.

Jun said...

Is Sailer a nice guy? No.OMG! I mean, wtf?! If such a comment weren't so laughable and ridiculous I'd be insulted on your behalf, Steve. :-/

I notice that Saletan-the-Nice doesn't seem to offer any actual evidence that you aren't "nice" -- and as many others already commented here, you come across as one of the nicest bloggers out there.

And anyway, what does being nice or not have to do with having an honest discussion?

Sheesh. And I thought I'd heard everything.

Rain And said...

Steve Sailer and Michael Blowhard both come across as two of the most approachable, kind people in the blogosphere.

clem said...

King Obama: Are you a racist, Steve? For instance, are you against interracial relationships? Do you have any black friends?

Sailer: Some of my best friends are black.

King Obama: That's what racists always say. Do you really think that just because you have black friends (including Ward Connerly), and aren't opposed to racial intermarriage, it means you're not a racist?

Even though you're an anti-semite.Do you have any Jewish friends, Steve? Do you think that just because Steven Pinker is/was a regular reader of yours, that means you're not an anti-semite?

More importantly, and most potentially damning: Do you have any SWPL friends? And if your son were to start dating an SWPL girl, could you accept her (and their HBD-SWPL hybrid children) as a full and equal member of your family?

As King Obama has noticed, your true colors are starting to show, Steve. And I must say, it's not pretty.

Lucius Vorenus said...

AMac: Racists, racists, racists--they're everywhere. Worse than Commies, back in the 1950s.

Actually, Commies WERE everywhere back in the 1950s.

And it would be a decided improvement in American political affairs if racists were - oh, who am I kidding? - Steve would never let me post that thought.

kudzu bob said...

Wow, all this makes me think of the French radicals who used to aver, "Better wrong with Sartre than right with Camus."

My spidey sense tells me that in five years, maybe less, you'll be famous enough that the pundits on TV will say, "Better nice with the Blank Slateists than right with Sailer." Five years after that they will have been forgotten but you will be a major force in American intellectual life.

Your time is coming, Steve. I'm sure of it.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Sailer, you've got to realize that people are going to be coming for you now(has anyone checked that JournoList?) Look at what they did to those white kids at Duke. At first it will be figuratively, then, literally. That's what things are coming to in this nation. You'll be the new Goldstein. Seriously, I'd be ready for some nasty, nasty stuff. They'll come for your family too. Harden yourself and have a honest talk with your loved ones about what may go down in. That's how the Left operates. I think you crossed the Rubicon here, there is probably no going back. I'd look into some security enhancement if you haven't already done so. Maybe I'm over the top, but I don't think so. We are entering a very unstable period in this nation and things are going to get very, very rough for many people.
And all this "nice guy" stuff is bad news. The time for being nice is over. Just remember where "nice guys" finish...

Lucius Vorenus said...

notuswind: The irony is that all this is coming from an ideology that prides itself on being pro-science!

Which, in turn, tells you what about "Science"?

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's because I've been reading him for so long, but I always find it really funny when Steve pops up in the so-called mainstream press. I have a mental picture of the more interesting (ie non-neocon) conservative writers stuck down in the rings of media hell, and the idea that Steve is moving toward the outer rings of Buchanan and Limbaugh, guys who are disliked but tolerated, and away from inner-ring guys like Jared Taylor, who are hated and ignored, means perhaps that his ideas are becoming too true to ignore. (In the innermost ring I picture K. McDonald.) Too bad it took the election of Obama to wake the liberals up, but I bet a lot of them read the Obama book. The constant attacks on the flaccid current GOP displays a definite sense of "now that we got what we want, what the hell do we have?" among them. Welcome to the outer rings, Steve, where they'll demonize you and hold you up as an example of whatever they hate, but at least they'll acknowledge you.

Anonymous said...

"thanks to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project and Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League"

I guess it's true that it takes a hater to know one, because those people are [expletive deleted] demented haters.

Anthony said...

How many people remember that Charles Murray, in "The Bell Curve", said that some amount of AA was justified by the difference in black and white IQ? He spends a whole chapter discussing it, and suggesting that blacks be given a specific boost (about 1/2 the difference between the group means) in places where standardised testing is used.

Anonymous said...

You just can't go around telling whole races of people that they are less intelligent. It would not go well. I'm white person. Because I can 1) read and 2) observe reality, I know that white people, as a group, are less intelligent than East Asians, as a group. It goes perfectly well.

kudzu bob said...

"It would be interesting to get an idea of how you feel."

Well, that's King Obama's take, anyhow.

I much prefer Gore Vidal's attitude. A hapless interviewer once asked Vidal how he felt about something-or-other. The famous author fixed him with his patented patrician stare and said, "I won't tell you how I feel, but I'll tell you what I think."

Anonymous said...

From McWhorter's TNR article, "Why would a nationally prominent journalist pretend not to understand why National Assessment of Educational Progress data is broken down by race, as if he lives in a different country--or century--than his own? Because what he learned from his drubbing in 2007 is that any findings that shed less than positive light on black people are, quite simply, inappropriate for public viewing."

Anyone disagree with that?

Anonymous said...

Renember the first paragraph of Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," which satirizes the mediocrity that arises when we don't distinguish between "equality" and "sameness"? Here it is, in case you haven't read it in a while:

*****************************
"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."
*******************************
Prophetic!

Anonymous said...

As long as you have a taste for absurd humor, how can you not like what you do Steve? Getting called a racist is a drag, I know, but is it not mitigated by preposterous articles such as this one, at this point?

Kevin MacDonald says the problem with us is that we need to "stop being wimps. And stop being so damned principled." I agree, and so there may be something to you being a nice guy.

For example, I reference your now legendary engagement with Jim Manzi; I would have...well, maybe you are perhaps lacking in Irish, German, or similarly obstreperous/martial DNA to get in a chump like Manzi's face when he oversteps the bounds of civility, as I would, I'm not sure who is right.

I believe your generation had a saying in some circles: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" We may have reached, or are fast approaching, a point where if you are smart about it, being politically incorrect may be a positive expectation value move, and you are positioned better than all of us in that regard. Chin up man.

rainy_day said...

[Melykin:] Two cases where one ethnic group within a population was perhaps smarter than other groups are the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the East Indians in Uganda, under Idi Amin. Neither of these situations turned out well. But, the resented groups were minorities in both cases, angry Blacks + Hispanics couldn't do the same here. Whites wouldn't be lynch-mob angry because we're well-enough off. So what /would/ it do? I dunno, besides increase the suffering of Blacks. But you know, it might be worthwhile anyway, we'd then have a serious soul-searching, and self-redefinition. Like we've had to do when we discovered that the sky isn't a dome, that we're descended from apes, that computers beat us at chess, and that animals can communicate and use tools. On the compassion-requiring mainstream, don't we all have smarter & dumber friends and relatives? It may /deepen/ our humanity, as you'd expect absorbing truth to do. Still, it's easy for a White guy to say (though, it has to be said, Whites aren't the 'top' race either, and I'm still functioning. But then we're not both a minority and at the bottom, either). Gently, slowly maybe, but it will be done one way or another.

Piper said...

Next time I see Saletan* I'm going to ask him whether he has any idea what happens when you try to categorize people by, say, family SES instead of race.

He will say, "no, but isn't it obvious that we could forget about race if we just looked at objective factors?"

I will laugh long and bitterly, then tell Saletan to go back to the library, or perhaps just to Google, to check out, for (just one) example, Derek Bok's** "Shape of the River."

When he does, he will learn (pace Trotsky) that "you may not be interested in race, but race is interested in you." All those SES or cultural factors (or even more remarkably, functional genetic variations) you think are so interesting turn out to be proxies for-- wait for it-- race!

And not in the ways that you wish, either. Take Bok's book (please!). Bok explains pretty clearly (it's his best point) that only proper color-line racism will do for affirmative action in college admissions, because if you rely on non-color factors, you end up admitting too many bright white kids from poor or broken white families. Too many? Yes, because "people of disparate impact" insist upon identifying themselves by race, then accusing you of racism because your non-racial criteria don't admit enough people with dark skin.

You can't escape race by using non-racial criteria because if your criteria predict intellectual, athletic, or economic performance (or really, anything else of interest), they will inevitably predict race as well (to a statistically- and socially-significant extent). Intent has nothing to do with it and protesting that your motives are pure will not save you from the wrath of the racial-politics crowd.

*That's a joke-- I don't know W. Saletan personally and don't expect to meet him anytime soon.

**A truly evil book, but sometimes useful.

B322 said...

McWhorter's idea seems like something that would command the respect of iSteve fans.My guess is that McWhorter doesn't know that blacks score better on culture-loaded test items than they do on more heavily g-loaded items. He probably figures that "if" they could design a wordless IQ test (e.g. Raven's Progressive Matrices, which he probably is unaware of), that blacks and whites would score about the same. He probably also figures that IQ scores predict higher black dropout rates (instead of lower).

Basically McWhorter is only a realist by modern, freakishly PC standards.

wren said...

"This is what happens when you deny reality. First you lose your senses, then your mind, then your soul."

--William Saletan

headache said...

"Condemnation won't make it go away."

Well, at least he admits his problem. I'm sure he's a nice guy though. Denegrating those who don't share his views, after having done everything to keep them out of the mainstream. What a jerk!

Anyways Steve, I'm really glad for you that you are starting to make the mainstream. These guys are no longer able to walk all over you. Your concsistent hard work over the decades is starting to pay off. Your motto may be true after all. Congrats!

Melykin said...

Anonymous wrote:
"...I'm white person. Because I can 1) read and 2) observe reality, I know that white people, as a group, are less intelligent than East Asians, as a group. It goes perfectly well..."

Try to imagine how you would feel if you were living in a ghetto in China with other white people.

Anonymous said...

"Two cases where one ethnic group within a population was perhaps smarter than other groups are the Jews in Nazi Germany,..."


Where's the data?

Anonymous said...

Wow, I didn't think Slate would stoop to religious bigotry. Did you know Odinism is a "racist offshoot" of "Neo-Nordic paganism [which] appeared in the United States in the 1970s and '80s"? That's funny, since the gent who coined the term "Odinism" died in 1876. Crystal balls and all that. But obviously, when a white person belongs to a religion that didn't originate in the Middle East, they're clearly a racist.

Hey, the SPLC and Slate didn't originate in the Middle East either! Those racists. They probably don't even live in the Middle East.

Anonymous said...

Try to imagine how you would feel if you were living in a ghetto in China with other white people.I'd feel AWESOME because I'd get to socialize with OTHER WHITE PEOPLE, but be ruled by smart Chinamen.

El Caudillo said...

I gotta tell ya Don Steve -

This hombre Saletan is giving you some MAJOR PROPS!

In a 'round a bout', inverted way, he is introducing your ideas, and what absolutely seems to be the respect he has for them --

...into a broader 'mainstream' audience!

Mucho Gusto!!!

Simon said...

"Is Sailer a nice guy?"

The million-dollar question! The fact is, most people willing to go against strong social norms (such as the taboo on discussing race) are not that 'nice' - they tend to be prickly and iconoclastic at the least, some seem borderline autistic. Sailer doesn't seem to fit this mold, and I've seen claims from leftists and liberals that his entire online persona must be a facade, concealing the Horrible Nazi Truth.

FWIW I think Sailer is a pretty nice guy, from what I can tell. Odd, but nice.

Kai Carver said...

I think Steve Sailer is a nice guy*. But I hesitate to say so in public. I want my friends to keep thinking I'm a nice guy. Changing my friends is not an option. I hope my comment doesn't show up on Google. Uh-oh.

*sadly, all his commenters don't seem to be. There. Now I've made everyone mad.

Simon said...

Oh, I think Saletan deserves kudos for trying to convince the left-mainstream of the truth of human biodiversity/variation by race, in the face of considerable professional risk.

El Caudillo said...

Why are Whites, as a broad racial group, ALWAYS -- for HBD reasons --compared to 'E. Asians' as a racial SUB-GROUP???

I mean, it is amazing that we Whites, through the long history of WestCiv, were actually able to even walk upright without the 'help' of these numinous "East" asians!!!

Anonymous said...

Raven's Matrices is NOT culture-neutral, it shows among the largest Flynn Effect and training gains of any IQ subtests. Playing with block/shape toys, differences in math instruction, and similar environmental factors can dramatically alter scores.

dearieme said...

"Working-class blacks and whites [are]unfamiliar with the art of answering direct questions": so, in my experience, are women; yet they do perfectly well in IQ tests.

Simon said...

Since the four-fifths rule is itself discriminatory and apparently unConstitutional, can't the US federal government be sued for using it?

Simon said...

El Caudillo:

"OK, I finally get it. Whites are broadly grouped together, as with Hicks and Helsinki natives, but 'yellows' (Asians) are carefully distiguished into sub-groups; and their highest scoring group is compared to the White average."

No, Hicks and Helsinki natives are closely related northern Europeans, and score very closely on IQ tests, within a couple of points. The difference between the highest and lowest scoring white populations in the US is about 4 points (100 to 104, where 100 is the median IQ of the US population).

On Lynn's UK-normed figures, the lowest-scoring US white populations ('hicks') score around 98, the highest (Minnesota, AIR) score around 102. You seem the same narrow 98-102 spread across northern Europe (and Italy). Lower scoring Caucasian populations are found in the Balkans, and much lower in the Middle East and south Asia.

The north-east-Asian population subgroup (northern China, Japan, Korea, Chinese colonies) scores a median 105 (up to around 108 or so in the cities). This is a population around twice the size of the northern-European population. I don't see how the two aren't comparable.

FWIW, according to Lynn, from brain size comparisons one would expect northern Europeans to have IQ around 10 below north-east Asians, not the ca 5 points actually observed. N-Euro measured IQ also seems similarly elevated compared to other population groups.

Unknown said...

I've posted about this before, and here I go again. Having taught and traveled extensively in east Asia for more than 10 years, I seriously doubt that the overall east Asian IQ is really so high. If it is, then it has to do with some test-taking propensity rather than really higher intelligence. Why else would east Asians have only recently begun copying western technology that they never could have invented? Why didn't _they_ come up with the industrial and scientific revolutions, not to mention representative government and modern civil society? It's highly apparent that they can get the technology and science down reasonably well, but not the institutions or the spirit of western legal systems. Why doesn't anyone ever mention these things?

Pat Shuff said...

If you are faced by a difficulty or a controversy in science, an ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument. -- J.B.S Haldane

Poor Mr. Saleton blundered into the algebra somewhere and has not been well since. It just won't easily come off the shoe.

Anonymous said...

"Does he display an unhealthy interest in categorizing people by race or ethnicity?"

Can people like Saletan really not see the irony in this statement?

Anonymous said...

"I love you.
Even though you're an anti-semite."

You love him because you know deep down in your heart that "anti-semite" is, as Hobbes would say, insignifigant speech.

What is usually meant by anti-semite is anyone who identifies Jews as working in their own self interest or against another's self interest.

Shawn said...

You're a nice guy Steve!

AMac said...

Upthread, Lucius Vorenus noted --

Actually, Commies WERE everywhere back in the 1950s.Yep. And, for all the careers they tried to ruin, how did Joe McCarthy & friends do in defending us from the Red Menace?

How about the scorecard of Mainstream 'tellectuals in protecting society from the racist menace, so far?

As a small contribution, I'd like to draw Saletan and McWhorter's attention to a cabal that is hatefully compiling information on supposed racial differences in America. The extreme right-wing foundations that support them can be viewed here.For a you-know-what, Sailer was consistently mild-tempered and polite during his tenure at TPMCafe last month. It was some of his interlocutors who came across as a bit unhinged. But I'm sure he kicks his dog when nobody's looking.

AMac said...

At GNXP, 'agnostic' provides some background on how the Grey Lady might cover the science behind the current dispute.

"[The graphs in the post jibe] with what most people say about the NYT science reporting -- it's great for the hard sciences, but it might as well be the funny pages for social science or health and nutrition. Sure, the NYT regularly churns out stories about non-existent 'trends' based on what's fashionable among a handful of neurotic Jewish mothers on the Upper West Side. But at the same time, the NYT also allows Carl Zimmer, Nicholas Wade, and John Tierney to get the word out about a lot of great research."

Anonymous said...

" king obama said...
I guess this cuts to a question I have been meaning to as Steve for a while: Are you a racist, Steve?

It would be interesting to get an idea of how you feel.

For instance, are you against interracial relationships? Do you have any black friends?

You never seem to reveal your true feelings about that subject, despite being called a racist all the time."

Back of the line. You don't get an answer until I get an answer to my question about Steve's SAT and IQ scores.

Anonymous said...

"Working-class blacks and whites [are]unfamiliar with the art of answering direct questions"

"So, in my experience, are women; yet they do perfectly well in IQ tests."

Add the Japanese to that list of high-IQ peeps who shun answering direct questions.

Anonymous said...

Steve is nice, it's true. The beard is a giveaway. Gosh, he's so nice he wouldn't even let my comment directed toward McWhorter's ridiculous assertion that "Working-class blacks and whites communicate orally rather than in writing, and they're unfamiliar with the art of answering direct questions" pass. I'll try again, hoping he's in a mean mood this morning, and not a nice one.

"Working class" whites, like I'm descended from, built the West. Their "working class" black equivalents - and this isn't meant snarkily at all - built Sub-Saharan Africa. I'm not saying one's better or worse - it's certainly in the eye of the beholder. I'm just saying that trying to draw some type of equivalence between the two groups simply because they're not the, ahem, elites of their broader group is absurd.

Anonymous said...

Steve, why not hoist Saletan on his own petard by pointing out how a denial of human nature / hbd helped motivate communist atrocities?

In contrast, the HBD movement simply uses science to pursue truth.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you can expect to find yourself banned from entering the U.K. soon.

Anonymous said...

If the Left would just come out and say they believe everyone should "receive according to their need", this pretense that there are no group differences could be dropped.

Eric Rasmusen said...

The 4/5 Rule is interesting. Take a look at my weblog post of today on the percentage of different races wh o make partner at major law firms. Delicious lawsuit material for Asians! (and probably for whites)


http://rasmusen1.blogspot.com/2009/05/discrimination-in-major-law-firms.html

Anonymous said...

I agree that Steve is among the more approachable bloggers out there, and disagree that his interest in race and ethnicity is unhealthy. Saletan should compare Steve to the folks over at Majority Rights. The difference between the two sites is the difference between a healthy interest in HBD and an unhealthy one.

Anonymous said...

"Working-class blacks and whites [are]unfamiliar with the art of answering direct questions": so, in my experience, are women; yet they do perfectly well in IQ tests.Bingo! (And they have smaller brains than black men.)

Raven's Matrices is NOT culture-neutral, it shows among the largest Flynn Effect and training gains of any IQ subtests. Playing with block/shape toys, differences in math instruction, and similar environmental factors can dramatically alter scores.Completely backwards. Word-based IQ tests are so culture-loaded that they actually mask the Flynn Effect, probably because they were even more culture-loaded in the past, artificially raising the scores of dimmer groups more in the past than the scores of the same groups in the present.

Tell me, what is your reasoning for thinking reserve digit span is "NOT culture-neutral"? That is what you believe, isn't it? "Hetmale patriarchy depriving black kids from exposure to telephone numbers"?

Lucius Vorenus said...

SFG: Actually, Steve does strike me as nice...in many cases too nice to follow his thoughts all their way to their logical end. ;)

Hear, hear.

Too nice or too politically correct [or maybe just too desirous of a seat at the Kook Kidz table?].

But I don't get the sense that any of these guys - Sailer, Murray, Spengler - have thought their positions through to their logical [and inevitable] conclusions.

The Derb might sense the horror of what is coming, but - if he does - he can't talk about it for fear of losing his sinecure at Temple Buckley Shalom.

Svigor said...

Try to imagine how you would feel if you were living in a ghetto in China with other white people.Try to imagine being a Chinese, and offering free tickets back to honkeytown, and getting zero takers because the SES of honkeytown whites is 1/20th the SES of China whites.

The elephant in the room is that whites are capable of producing a modern civilization on their own, and blacks are not.

Anonymous said...

"But I don't get the sense that any of these guys - Sailer, Murray, Spengler - have thought their positions through to their logical [and inevitable] conclusions."

These conclusions will not be pleasant. LV, if your's are anywhere as near as bad as mine are, we are in for a some nasty stuff. Can you please expound on your views in a way that Steve Sailer will let slip past Komment Kontrol?

Lucius Vorenus said...

Anonymous: Can you please expound on your views in a way that Steve Sailer will let slip past Komment Kontrol?

Apparently not - I'm only batting about 0.500 lately.

Anonymous said...

"Apparently not - I'm only batting about 0.500 lately."


Tell ya what. Go over to a site called Half Sigma. He has a post about the Saletan/Sailer thing. Maybe you could leave a comment there.

Anonymous said...

"I think Sailer is a pretty nice guy, from what I can tell."

Generally, but certain things can set him off. I remember when he went off on Bill Gates's wife and denounced her as EVIL!!!!!

Anonymous said...

In some imaginary fantasy land, where the recent cultural collapse hadn't happened, obviously I'd rather live with white people under white rule. But in the real world, I'd rather live in a white ghetto ruled by *sane* smart Chinamen, who can be relied on to act predictably in their own ethnic self-interest, then in the insanity of the modern West.

I can't use my local swimming pool and community center, because black kids steal stuff and any complaints about this are met with racial solidarity-based stonewalling. Taking local public transit is a taking a gamble with my safety. The local public schools are not a safe place for my children to be educated. And yet, I am paying for all these things. You're right, this isn't fundamentally about intelligence, but about sanity. However massive cultural insanity is a fact, and given that fact, and the total lack of will to create a social order where I can use the stuff I pay for - given the choices I *actually have* - a white ghetto in a provincial Chinese city sounds AWESOME, thank you.

Antioco Dascalon said...

Paraphrase: "If East Asians are so smart, why do they immigrate to the West?" One premise seems to be that there is a uniform movement of less intelligent people to more intelligent countries. I would guess, however, that immigrants historically came from the more educated class, or were at least more intelligent or motivated than those who stayed behind. Also, one could ask the same question about the Jews coming to, say, Russia or Indians coming to Africa. I don't think there is much correlation between intelligence and immigration. It may only seem so in contemporary America with the massive influx of illiterate Mexican immigrants.
Second, recall that we are talking about well over 1 billion East Asians. As a percent of total population, East Asians don't immigrate to the US in great numbers (i.e. similar to Western European immigration rates).
What's the reason East Asians immigrate to the US but not vice-versa. Of course, the answer is different legal environments. No one really can gain citizenship in Japan. China and Korea are not much easier for foreigners. Add to that that Japan is an island, China is surrounded by water, desert, high mountains and South Korea is a peninsula with the most militarized border in the world. There's very little illegal immigration in any of these countries. Finally, these countries (especially Korea and Japan) are more homogeneous and xenophobic. So, even if someone did slip by, it would be obvious that they were immigrants and they couldn't get a job without the proper papers.
It has nothing to do with IQ and everything to do with law and culture.

Anonymous said...

"Hicks and Helsinki natives are closely related northern Europeans, and score very closely on IQ tests, within a couple of points."

No, they are not.

British sub-groups (Pictish-Celts) are different from the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia.

David Davenport said...

British sub-groups (Pictish-Celts) are different from the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia.In what ways? Please explain.

Anonymous said...

"Paraphrase: "If East Asians are so smart, why do they immigrate to the West?" One premise seems to be that there is a uniform movement of less intelligent people to more intelligent countries."

Both your paraphrase and your premise are incorrect.


"Also, one could ask the same question about the Jews coming to, say, Russia or Indians coming to Africa."

Yes, one could. But you are not asking the correct question. Which is - "Why are the supposedly highly intelligent Jews incapable of constructing a country of their own which they would want to live in?"

And you can substitue "Chinese" for Jews if you like witout altering the validity of the question.

I am not claiming that the Jews or Chinese who come to America possess low IQ's. I am making the point that the possession of a high IQ says nothing at all useful about the ability of a group of people to construct a free, just, and humane society. I am making the point that, for all their high IQ, the people in question have zero abilty to create the sort of world which anybody, even themselves, would want to live in. Whatever "IQ" measures, it does not measure this, what might be called "civic intelligence".

Anonymous said...

"in the real world, I'd rather live in a white ghetto ruled by *sane* smart Chinamen, who can be relied on to act predictably in their own ethnic self-interest, then in the insanity of the modern West."


In other words you prefer fascism, which is what those smart Chinese have constructed for themselves, to whatever anarchic future the West has before it. I'll take my chances with the West. There is at least the potential for something good to come out of it.

Anonymous said...

I don't know about other anonymice, but my "strange fetish" with Asia stems from my experiences as a woman able to *walk around by myself at night* there.

Anonymous said...

"my "strange fetish" with Asia stems from my experiences as a woman able to *walk around by myself at night* there."

Ah, the pinnacle of human accomplishment. I bet their trains run on time too.

rising sun said...

"Try to imagine how you would feel if you were living in a ghetto in China with other white people."

I'd feel AWESOME because I'd get to socialize with OTHER WHITE PEOPLE, but be ruled by smart Chinamen."

ok guys. This exchange gets goofier and goofier.
Smart Chinamen? What freakin' smart Chinamen are you so eager to live under? What are the manifestations of this smartness? Believe me buddy, you wouldn't be happy about it.
.
Smart Chinamen? It's a Communist country. During the cultural revolution, late 60s, cannibalism was a common means of eliminating enemies in the Guangxi southeastern area. Read "Scarlet Memorials" by a Beijing journalist, Yi Zheng, who investigated it during the 80s.
The Chinese and Asians on the whole, are generally self-controlled and disciplined, and keepers of harmonious civil and family relations except in times of war (like the Germans) but they are not greatly more intelligent than Caucasians. The average IQs that I've seen for northeastern Asians range from slightly below 100 (China) to 105 (Hong Kong), to 107 (Japan, Korea) to 92 (Cambodia). In Europea they range from mid-90s (mostly rural areas--I suspect that's the case with China), to about 100 for England and Italy, to 105-108 for Germany and Poland. Asians are slightly "smarter" on the AVERAGE, but the deviation is nowhere as serious as the black/white gap of 15 points. You also have to keep in the mind that the black IQ curve is very narrow, most falling bewteen 75 and 93 or so, with less than 10% above 100 and a miniscule percentage above 120.
Modern technological society and modern constitutional democracy are white, European inventions. Of course as time goes on input from other cultures will increase. But the European primacy of invention is still so recent--indeed, still ongoing to an extent--that I am exasperated at the readiness of whites to govel before asian iq "superiority." It's not THAT much.

The Japanese took off with the auto industry after the American guy who made the U.S. industry so great, defected to Japan and taught them how to do it. Well, they did it better, but they didn't really invent it.
The Chinese have been stealing western IT technology at a record rate, aided and abetted by persons like Clinton. This theft, and the theft of American factories by American businessmen who re-established them in China, is why the Chinese have advanced so much in so little time. That and their native traits of organization and industriousness.
I'm not dissing them. I think they're pretty smart, I respect their culture. But I am sick of whites kowtowing to them in order to show how un-racist they are, because after all -- they "know" the Chinese are way more intelligent. Yeah. right.
The white/asian gap does not compare to the black/white gap. It is entirely a horse of another color.

Anonymous said...

so, in my experience, are women; yet they do perfectly well in IQ tests.Bingo! (And they have smaller brains than black men.)

I think this has been addressed recently in a thread--brain size is important relative to total body size. Actually I don't think the average size of the white female brain is smaller than the average black male. Something like 1350 for the former and 1250 for the latter.
Einstein's brain was not too much bigger than normal, but it was bigger for his size than, well, normal.

Anonymous said...

in many cases too nice to follow his thoughts all their way to their logical end.;) - SFG

But I don't get the sense that any of these guys - Sailer, Murray, Spengler - have thought their positions through to their logical [and inevitable] conclusions. LV

Saletan should compare Steve to the folks over at Majority Rights. The difference between the two sites is the difference between a healthy interest in HBD and an unhealthy one. - Mark Wetham

Seems to me that in some respects the folks over at MR are thinking these things through to their logical conclusions, and we can't have that can we Mark.

Anonymous said...

I don't know if this will matter to Asio-philes and neocons, but here it is anyway:

Germans are brainiest (but at least we're smarter than the French)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article697134.ece

IQ of mongolians
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18770425

Can Asians Think? (*Author means creatively*, I think)
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep04120128.pdf

~~

Also, according to Lynn, the average IQ of *British* and *American* Whites is 100, not, like the article says above, of continental and Germanic Europeans, which range up to 107.

No big surprise here, considering how "Chaved" and "Yobed", how mindlessly dystopian--and Orwellian--the countries of the 'Anglosphere' (English-speaking countries) have become.

Yes, a good portion of the British are ethnically pre-Anglo-Saxon by genes (hence non-Germanic) and more Pict-Celt and Cambrian/Caledonian by ethnicity:

English, Irish, Scots: They’re All One, Genes Suggest
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/science/05cnd-brits.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin

Anonymous said...

Ah, the pinnacle of human accomplishment. I bet their trains run on time too.Actually, yes, the traditional metonym for the well-governed state is the ability of women and goods to move freely and unmolested.

Anonymous said...

"Ah, the pinnacle of human accomplishment. I bet their trains run on time too.Actually, yes, the traditional metonym for the well-governed state is the ability of women and goods to move freely and unmolested."

Huh?

Anonymous said...

"But I am sick of whites kowtowing to them in order to show how un-racist they are..."

Notice too that it is virtually always Whites, who go around puffing up the supposed vaunted 'greatness' of Asians; rather than the Asians themselves?!!

I guess that is what multi-Kult Pee Cee mind control does to people -- turns 'em into wussies who need to project their fantasies onto strangers and foriegners.

Yawn said...

"In other words you prefer fascism..."

Ooh, a signifier! A buzzword!

Am I back on campus?

ben tillman said...

What is usually meant by anti-semite is anyone who identifies Jews as working in their own self interest or against another's self interest.-
That's about right. An anti-Semite is one who:

1. Recognizes that the interests of the Jewish community may conflict with the interests of others; and

2. Recognizes that there is no reason why such conflicts of interest need always be resolved in favor of the Jewish community.

Anonymous said...

"Ah, the pinnacle of human accomplishment. I bet their trains run on time too.Actually, yes, the traditional metonym for the well-governed state is the ability of women and goods to move freely and unmolested."

Huh?

Dude, that means ladies can walk about at night without being raped and stuff can be delivered without getting nicked. In a nutshell, that is...

Truth said...

"If "East Asians" are more intelligent than whites, then why do "East Asians" have this need to leave East Asia and come to live in white peoples countries?"

Just because the Asians are "smarter" now does not particularly mean that they were 100 or even 50 years ago when modern societies were built. Maybe the Flynn effect has been much higher in Asia then elsewhere, and maybe this continues to this day and the gap will continue to increase. The Chinese and Koreans have made a historically unprecedented gap in the past 30 years as compared to any population in the history of mankind.

And if that doesn't worry you, Steve e-mailed me a few months ago saying that recent tests in Hong Kong have put the median IQ there, according to what some researchers believe, NEAR 120!

Anonymous said...

"I guess that is what multi-Kult Pee Cee mind control does to people -- turns 'em into wussies who need to project their fantasies onto strangers and foriegners."

I don't think this is multi-cult at all. It's the logical result of the sort of "IQ" worship which many here have adapted. Having swallowed the idea that IQ is the measure of man, they can do no other than accept that Asians are the Master Race.

Anonymous said...

"Seems to me that in some respects the folks over at MR are thinking these things through to their logical conclusions"

Many folks at MR would not recognize logic if you dumped a bucket of it over them. I saw some amusing discussion there concerning the "good" white Europeans" versus the "bad" ones. Basically, the Protestants were good and the Catholics were bad. But northern Italians were made honorary Protestants, probably because that region was home to the Renaissance.

Anonymous said...

Komment Kontrol is totally Krazy tonight!

El Caudillo said...

OK, one more try....

"Just because the Asians are "smarter" now does not particularly mean that they were 100 or even 50 years ago when modern societies were built...

"The Chinese and Koreans have made a historically unprecedented gap in the past 30 years as compared to any population in the history of mankind. "

***

Good points.

We can further add this happened ALL with the help of Europeans and Americans AND the near total transference of their wealth and technology!

My overall belief is that Western Civilization is OUR civilization, and we should not be importing our purported "replacements", NO MATTER what 'IQ worshippers' WANT to believe about Orientals, Indians, or Jews.

Ya see, hombres, these guys don't really care about 'equality'; 'fair-ness and fair play'; cooperating with 'others'; essentially, ANYONE outside THEIR GROUP--this is all fool's gold for White Western bourgeois suckers.

WestCiv did JUST FINE over the course of its long history; and we will do just fine again...,

ESPECIALLY when we do not have to subsidize the rest of the world; expending so much wasted time and energy on our opponants.

Truth was right about one thing especially: IQ does not stay necessarily fixed -- it is subject to the will and energy of the people of a given society>(

(Frankly, it is amazing, as one Anon commentator pointed out before, that the US and UK even manage to break "100" on the IQ curve, considering what dysgenic, wussified, Pee Cee fools so many of their younger generation represent!)

And with the 50+ year "dysgenics" campaign (that's 'bad breeding') that the non-Germanic, English-speaking countries have waged against its own, this is even more amazing all the more so!

This is a world of scarcer and scarcer resources. Do not be deceived into going along with this 'Globaloney' of moving people around the planet like their some kind of interchangeable 'chess pieces': regardless of their supposed IQ and what IQ 'studies' purportedly show at a narrow given moment in time!

Pat Buchanan is sooooo right: America (and Western Civilization--Bless its name) --

...is not a Job Fair, Welfare Office or a Flop House --

...for the rest of el mundo to use--and abuse-- for its selfish whims and desires, no matter how supposedly 'intelligent' and 'wonderful' a few foreigners may--*ostensibly*--be!!!

Now again, let's hope that Steve posts this...

***

"I am making the point that the possession of a high IQ says nothing at all useful about the ability of a group of people to construct a free, just, and humane society.

"...the people in question have zero abilty to create the sort of world which anybody, even themselves, would want to live in."

Couldn't say it any better, Hermano!

Anonymous said...

"The Chinese and Koreans have made a historically unprecedented gap in the past 30 years as compared to any population in the history of mankind."

That would be one heck of a jump for a generation.

I know the Asians are eugenicists and all, but less than a single generation is a wee bit of a short amount of time.

More likely explanation: White wealth and technology transference.

After all, that's what Western Honkey's are very adept at --

...giving away the fruit's of their creativity and labour --

...often to future enemies that will use it all against them!


Question - Who was America's biggest trade partner in 1940?

Answer - The 'casa' of the risin' sun -- Japan.

And you see where that relationship went!

Anonymous said...

"the traditional metonym for the well-governed state is the ability of women and goods to move freely and unmolested."


Since when did that become the "traditional" definition of the well governed state? Obviously I'm referring to the "women" part and not the "goods", an odd pairing on your part but one you probably realized you needed to make your argument seem halfway plausible.

Svigor said...

Many folks at MR would not recognize logic if you dumped a bucket of it over them.

Fortunately, there you have free reign to set them straight, without having to go through Komment Kontrol (love that one :) ).

Svigor said...

And if that doesn't worry you, Steve e-mailed me a few months ago saying that recent tests in Hong Kong have put the median IQ there, according to what some researchers believe, NEAR 120!

Why would that worry anyone? I'd expect something similar in Portland if I made it the only free commerce zone in an America run the way China is.

Anonymous said...

"Also, according to Lynn, the average IQ of *British* and *American* Whites is 100, not, like the article says above, of continental and Germanic Europeans, which range up to 107.

No big surprise here, considering how "Chaved" and "Yobed", how mindlessly dystopian--and Orwellian--the countries of the 'Anglosphere' (English-speaking countries) have become.

Yes, a good portion of the British are ethnically pre-Anglo-Saxon by genes (hence non-Germanic) and more Pict-Celt and Cambrian/Caledonian by ethnicity:

English, Irish, Scots: They’re All One, Genes Suggest
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/science/05cnd-brits.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin"

It should be noted that in these national IQ comparisons the IQ of the British Isles is always 100 since it's used as the baseline.

It should also be noted that each study seems to say a different thing. There is another studies that indicated a steady shift from East to West as you move across England with a pronounced shift at the Welsh border, but that was solely a Y-Chromosome study and of people whose paternal grandfather was from the same area as them.

You might expect an invasion especially one that replaced the fighting classes to have more of an effect on Y-Chromosomes. For an extreme example I seem to recall that a sample of men from the Orkney Isles (Orcadians I think we say) showed that fifty percent of them had the type of Y Chromosome most often seen in Norway, however, the mitochrondial DNA of the population wasn't that different from mainland Scotland.

"Try to imagine how you would feel if you were living in a ghetto in China with other white people.I'd feel AWESOME because I'd get to socialize with OTHER WHITE PEOPLE, but be ruled by smart Chinamen."

I'd rather live in Hong Kong back when it was ruled (in a reasonably hands off kind of way) by people like me.